The Quintessential New York City Experience

Every sitcom or movie set in New York City always seems to include a scene in a tiny theater off Broadway with a performance by amateur actors. I know you know what I am talking about.

So when my friend who divides her time between DC and Brooklyn told me she would be performing the same weekend I would be up north, I determined to go. I took a bus early enough to make the Friday night performance and stowed my bike in the undercarriage. From the bus stop at Penn Station to Times Square, the bike ride should have only taken about 15 minutes.

Now even if I were in DC, I would need my handy GPS to get around. But I was biking in Manhattan. Manhattan! Those streets are even more crowded than DC. Every once in a while I had to stop riding, pull out my phone, and try to translate the phone's map to the street layout of one way streets.

After zigzagging through Times Square more times than I needed to, I finally found the theater. It wasn't even a half block from Times Square where the flashing lights spilled onto this street. Dodging the theater-goers who were leaving shows like The Lion King, I biked up and down the street trying to follow the building numbers but I just couldn't find this building. With the help of a woman rolling a cello down the sidewalk, my eyes finally saw the skinny building that looked like a plain office building but housed the theater. Yes, I did say that the woman was rolling a cello down the street.

Up on the 8th floor of this narrow building, I found a stage with maybe 60 theater seats. It was tiny. Gratefully, I drank the beer that came with the cost of admission. Not only was I thirsty from the ride, but I figured that being buzzed would help me enjoy the performance. Alcohol also tends to make me chatty, so when I saw this guy,  I laughed and struck up a conversation.

How could I not laugh? He glittered and shined like no one I had ever seen before. In one fluid swoop, his mustache started below his nose, swooped along his jaw line, ran over his ear and around the back of his head then ended at the starting point. One unbroken circle of hair. His mohawk was really made by two stripes shaved clean and decorated with beadazzle beads. Blue glittery lips playfully peeked beneath his hair and matched his blue glittery spandex pants.

Being super friendly, he talked to me all through intermission and indulged all of my questions. Foremost, I wanted to know if he dressed like this all day every day. I mean, does he dress like this for his day job? Yes, yes he does. With some sort of academic job in the sciences, he claims that he's only had to forgo his wild dress a few times.

Some of the storytellers that performed were much better than I expected. And the burlesque show based on Donkey Kong made us all laugh when the strip tease ended with nipples covered in gorilla fur. But none of these performers had the same panache as this guy who doesn't change his clothes when he leaves the theater to go out on the street. I wonder if he knows that I consider him part of my NYC experience?